Immigrants' rights supporters march down Jackson Boulevard on Feb. 16, 2017, in Chicago as people across the U.S. hold a Day Without Immigrants protest to show the impact immigrants have on the economy. PHOTO: Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune

A wide-ranging conversation with Charles Murray took an awkward turn Tuesday night when Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol shared his view that white, working-class Americans should be replaced by immigrants.

Kristol wasn’t terribly bad on immigration in recent years, not as good as David Frum, but by no means awful. Unfortunately, that era seems to be ending:

… At one point, Dr. Murray explained how, though he never warmed to Donald Trump, the 2016 election did lead him to adopt a restrictionist position on low-skilled immigration. Dr. Kristol replied that he’d “actually sort of gone the opposite way on immigration.” …

He explained:

Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in? Seriously, you can make the case—this is going on too long and this is too crazy, probably, and I hope this thing isn’t being videotaped or ever shown anywhere. Whatever tiny, pathetic future I have is going to totally collapse.

Bill Kristol is pretty honest and unfiltered, not very suave or cunning. Refreshingly, he often just says whatever idea his emotions popped into his head at the moment.

After some awkward laughter from the audience, Dr. Kristol elaborated:

You can make a case that America has been great because every—I think John Adams said this—basically if you’re a free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled—whatever. Then, luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico, who really want to work hard and really want to succeed and really want their kids to live better lives than them and aren’t sort of clipping coupons or hoping that they can hang on and meanwhile grew up as spoiled kids and so forth. In that respect, I don’t know how this moment is that different from the early 20th century.

… By contrast, Dr. Murray was sympathetic to the white working class. …

We as Americans owe an obligation to our fellow Americans . . . that should take priority over our obligation to the world’s population and globalization. So I’m in favor of limiting low-skilled immigration.